The role of deformation twinning in the fracture behavior and mechanism of basal textured magnesium alloys

AZ31 magnesium alloys were deformed to 10% and to failure strain by tensile loading at room temperature. Scribed grids were drawn by a focused ion beam system (FIB) to visualize the local deformation in each grain. This showed that the magnitude of the strain was distributed non-uniformly in each grain. It was found that the low-strain grains accompanied {10-12} twins, while the severely strained grains accompanied {10-11}-{10-12} double twins. Cracks nucleated at the double twins and tended to propagate along {10-12} twin interfaces as well as within grains. Furthermore, fractography revealed three types of microstructural features: dimples, elliptic facets and sheared dimples. Most abundant were the dimples formed by ductile failure. The elliptic facets appeared to be due to crack propagation along the {10-12} twin interfaces. The sheared dimples were frequently observed in connection with localized shear deformation within the double twins. These results led us to conclude that premature and catastrophic failure of Mg alloys is mainly associated with double twins. Prevention of double twinning is essential to improve the ductility of Mg alloys.